Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has said she intends to rally left-wing allies to run against President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 presidential election.
“I’m laying the groundwork for a movement that I want to bring people together and make proposals to the French,” Hidalgo told Europe 1 radio on Sunday.
Presidential elections are scheduled for April next year and current polls show far-right candidate Marine Le Pen as Macron’s main rival. France also has regional elections in June, although the government has warned that they will only happen if the health context allows.
While polls have so far not been encouraging for the Socialist mayor of Paris, with less than 10% of voting intentions in the first round of elections, a recent poll showed he could reach the second round if he can muster other matches. on the left and the Greens, who plan to run with their own candidate.
Amid criticism over its treatment of the coronavirus crisis, Macron’s popularity rate fell 4 percentage points in March from the previous month, with 37% of people satisfied with the president, according to a FIFG survey for the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche. Macron has not said he would run again, but his teams are already working on his re-election.
Since Saturday, Paris and about a third of the country have been closed again, with schools open and outdoor activity being encouraged, but some non-essential businesses have closed. The complex rules have fueled confusion among citizens and have led to complaints from store owners who consider themselves non-essential.
Criticism of the government
The head of business lobby Medef on Saturday criticized the government for what he called the “persecution” of companies forced to close. Hidalgo joined the heart of the criticism and criticized the government’s lack of transparency in handling the pandemic, with key choices made by only a handful of ministers during so-called “defense cabinet meetings.”
However, Macron’s popularity, which a year ago said France was “at war” with the virus, is even greater than his predecessors, Socialist Francois Hollande and right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy, at the same time as the their mandates, according to the Ifop Survey.